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Lessons from Greensburg

The disastrous night of May 4, 2007, was a learning experience as well

BY STAN FINGER

The Wichita Eagle

When meteorologists and emergency management officials have nightmares, they're often about tornadoes bearing down on cities at night.

It was already so dark on May 4, 2007, that storm chasers had to rely on lightning flashes and snapping power lines to track a large tornado -- a "wedge" -- as it bore down on Greensburg.

The tornado, later estimated to be 1 ¾ miles wide and an EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, killed 11 people in the Kiowa County seat, injured dozens more and wiped out 95 percent of the town.

As another tornado season looms, local and state officials are working to implement lessons they've learned from the Greensburg tornado.

Some of those lessons are time-honored truths reaffirmed, such as the need for people to respond quickly to threats.

Other lessons are proving more difficult for officials to apply, among them creating a statewide communications network for emergency service responders.

Spring brings a sense of urgency.

"There's nothing that's changed atmospherically that makes tornadoes less likely," said Mike Smith, chief executive of WeatherData Services, a Wichita-based private forecasting service that is a subsidiary of AccuWeather.

"Greensburg isn't some sort of fluke."

The supercell thunderstorm complex spawned numerous other tornadoes that night -- one of which was larger and stronger than the Greensburg tornado.

That tornado, measured at 2.2 miles wide, was on course to hit the Edwards County town of Belpre before lifting just south of the town. Another tornado touched down east of that one, grew to at least a mile wide and killed an elderly man at his farm near Hopewell before lifting about a mile from Macksville.

"I thought Macksville was a goner," Smith said.

Yet another tornado touched down east of Macksville, killed a Stafford County sheriff's deputy on U.S. 50 and missed St. John by perhaps four miles.

"We could have had two or three more Greensburgs that night," Smith said.

'A textbook case'

From a warning standpoint, "Greensburg was a textbook case of taking the knowledge and technology that has been gleaned over the last 50 years and applying it," Smith said. "The system worked beautifully."

And it saved lives.

As word spread that Greensburg had taken a direct hit in the darkness from a massive tornado, emergency management officials expected to need hundreds of body bags in Kiowa County.

But a tornado warning had been in effect for nearly a half-hour -- and Greensburg took shelter.

In contrast, much of Udall was asleep in 1955 when a huge tornado hit less than a half-hour after television forecasters announced that the threat for severe weather was gone.

The 1 ½-mile-wide tornado killed 77 people in Udall and five others in rural areas. It remains the deadliest tornado in state history, and led to the creation of storm spotter networks and the use of tornado watches and warnings.

Last May, a tornado warning had been in effect for 26 minutes by the time the tornado struck Greensburg at about 9:50 p.m.

Mike Umscheid, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service's Dodge City bureau, issued a "tornado emergency" for Greensburg -- a rarely used alert issued for specific cities in danger -- 10 minutes before the tornado struck.

Smith, who studied the storm and its path, estimates that those warnings saved more than 230 lives in Greensburg.

Time-honored truth

Authorities have stressed for decades the best place to take shelter from a tornado is in a basement.

The Greensburg tornado, with wind speeds topping 200 miles an hour, drove home that point.

"There's really no structure above ground that's going to survive a tornado like that," said Larry Ruthi, meteorologist in charge at the Dodge City branch of the weather service.

But Greensburg also showed that simply being in the basement isn't enough, officials said.

"You need to get under something," Ruthi said. "When the house comes apart, all that debris goes somewhere."

More than one victim of the Greensburg tornado was killed by debris that fell into the basement of their home, he said.

Taking shelter under heavy tables or stairwells in the basement, for example, can offer valuable protection from falling debris, officials said.

"Stairwells are about as safe as anyplace," Ruthi said. "In at least a couple of houses in Greensburg, there was a lot of debris, but the stairwell was holding up very well."

While Greensburg residents sought shelter on May 4, studies show that many took more than five minutes to get there. Those results trouble meteorologists, who say they can't guarantee that much advance warning.

No tornado warning was in effect, for example, when a tornado touched down on the edge of Hoisington in April 2001, quickly grew to an EF-4 with winds in excess of 166 miles an hour and blasted through the north side of town.

Only two people were killed because residents were so troubled by the stormy weather that night that they took shelter anyway, said Chance Hayes, warning coordination meteorologist with the weather service's Wichita office.

'Like a deep rumble'

Mandy Sorg has always been scared of tornadoes. Her co-workers at the Pizza Hut in Greensburg laughed at her, she said, when the tornado sirens went off in late April and she headed right home to the basement.

She raced home when they went off again on May 4. She bundled up her infant daughter and young son in extra layers of clothes and headed for the basement, piling pillows up as an extra layer of protection.

Her boyfriend, Joe, stood in the front yard watching for the tornado.

"He could hear it coming -- it was like a deep rumble," Sorg said. "The sky was just a sheet of black. You could tell that it was getting really bad."

He finally came down to the basement moments before the tornado hit. Mandy wrapped her infant daughter, Marie, in a bedsheet and showed her 7-year-old son, Michael, how to duck down and cover his head.

Then she told him that if Mommy or Joey couldn't get up, he should go to the hospital just down the block. A dull roar engulfed the house, and a pungent smell filled the room.

The smell was the dust being released as the tornado tore the house apart above them and carried it away. But Sorg and her boyfriend didn't realize that at first, because the basement room they were in was the only one that was not damaged.

"My boyfriend said, 'We need to check upstairs,' and we went upstairs and we were outside," Sorg said. "We were standing in the driveway, looking north, and you could see it on the north side of town leaving town. I pointed and said, 'Look, Michael Ray, you can see the tornado.' It's a picture in my mind that I'll never forget."

And then it dawned on her what that meant.

"We shouldn't have been able to see the tornado, but there was nothing left to block our view," Sorg said.

Tornado kits

Sorg and her boyfriend are rebuilding in Greensburg, and she insisted on having a basement. She wants to put together a "tornado kit" -- and vows not to take so long to get to shelter next time.

"What if you didn't have that five minutes" to get to shelter? she asked. "You should be ready to go right away."

All families should put together a tornado kit and a tornado safety plan, officials said.

"They need to sit down and say, 'There's a tornado coming, and it's bearing down on us. Where do we go when we need to get to shelter?' " Hayes said.

They should also designate a meeting point in the yard or another part of town in case the tornado strikes while part of the family is elsewhere. An out-of-town relative or friend should be chosen as a contact person in the event loved ones become separated.

Any tornado kit needs to include identification, shoes, medications, nonperishable foods and flashlights with batteries, Greensburg Mayor John Janssen said.

"That was a serious issue, getting re-identified" after the tornado, Janssen said. "People lost all their driver's licenses, credit cards and all that kind of stuff."

Families should also have a battery-powered weather radio, television or radio with them when they take shelter so they can monitor conditions.

Forecasters worry that with too much warning time, residents may seek shelter for several minutes, become convinced the threat has passed and come out before the worst of the storm hits.

Studies have shown that fatalities increase if there is more than 15 minutes of warning time, Smith said.

Udall survivors talked of hearing the tornado's roar and then climbing outside when it grew quiet -- only to have to dive for cover again when the back side of the tornado arrived.

The tornado that tore through Greensburg nearly looped back around to hit the town a second time.

Sorg never knew that, and admitted "I don't know what I would have done" had the tornado doubled back.

Often more than one

As the tornado was leaving Greensburg, an even larger tornado formed a short distance to the east in Kiowa County and grew. That cycle repeated continuously deep into the evening, and two tornadoes were often on the ground at the same time.

As a result, Hayes said he is stressing a new point in storm spotter training classes this spring: Pay attention to what's going on around you.

Hayes and other officials believe Stafford County sheriff's Deputy Robert "Tim" Buckman was killed by one tornado while he was tracking another in the darkness shortly before midnight May 4.

Buckman was racing west on U.S. 50 toward Macksville to warn about the tornado south of the city.

"He drove right into it," Ruthi said.

The importance of planning and preparation can't be overstated, said Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management.

"Sometimes it's just a minute," Watson said, "before your entire life changes."

Reach Stan Finger at 316-268-6437 or sfinger@wichitaeagle.com.